Our real and natural resources

At Young Friends Nursery and Nature School we choose to provide real and natural resources instead of plastic ones. There are many reasons why this method is beneficial to children desire to investigate and imitate. The minute we replaced our plastic tea sets with the real versions role play became far deeper and richer. They were actually imitating the adults around them because these are the real things they use. Natural resources flood not only our Reggio Emilia areas but also our maths, writing and construction areas. For example, we have made our own wooden blocks of all shapes and sized to children can make their own imaginative cityscapes. They count and sort in a much more intricate and child led manner with driftwood, shells, pine-cones and much much more. The children decide their tasks and how complicated or simple to make them. This, we find, is far more educational and mind-enhancing than colour and shape sorting with their plastic counterparts where the task is already dictated.